The Place Between
by NajaMoonshadow
Summary: Carina isn't looking for adventure, she's just taking care of her crazy grandmother. But when a wounded alien breaks into her grandmother's house, she's got no choice but to go along for the ride...human/yaut'ja adventures galore!
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing, except my imagination, and a little black cat. Well, he mostly owns me...

Author's Note: Hello everyone and thanks for joining me! Or rather us, if you count my characters, which they probably want to be counted. ANYWAY, this my second Predator fic and I'm have a blast writing it, and I sincerely hope you have fun reading it! Enjoy!

Chapter 1

The truck jounced hard over a rut that had been deepened by the spring rain. A cloud of dust, stirred up by the wheels, followed behind the rusty red pick-up truck as it meandered down the treacherous dirt road. Behind the wheel, scowling in irritation, was a young woman in faded blue jean shorts and a sweat soaked tee-shirt bearing the logo '_Benito's Blue Busters_!' in peeling letters. Her name was Carina Torrez, and her ill humor was increasing by the minute.

She yanked the wheel hard to the right, barely avoiding another rut that sported a large, exposed stone at it's bottom. Her wheels were already five years old and mostly bald, they didn't need to be flat too! Swearing, Carina considered, once again, the legal processes that would force her grandmother into a nursing home, instead of living at the end of this god-forsaken road in this god-forsaken forgotten county. Carina snarled as her truck dipped down into a deep crevice and she heard her muffler scrap ominously along the bottom of the track.

"I swear if I make it the last 5 miles and my truck has anything missing…." Carina growled and considered what she might do. Nothing, of course. She had volunteered to take care of her grandmother when her mother died last year. She had volunteered to come out and check on the old woman at least three times a week, even thought it was almost a three hour drive one way. And…she loved the old bird. _Loco _as she was for living way, way out.

Twenty minutes later, Carina bounced into the yard and sighed with relief. Her grandmother's 'driveway' was almost ten miles long, traversing a good section of national park, and the roadway hadn't been graded in a good six years. It was a damned miracle the whole roadbed hadn't finally washed out in the spring floods. Her grandmother didn't drive anymore, and rarely had need of groceries, due to prolific size of her garden, so the roadbed was rarely a consideration for her.

The yard was still. It was an exceptionally hot summer, the heat wave spiking the normal 90 to nearer 115 degrees with close to 80% humidity. A few chickens, the descendants of the one's Carina and her brothers had chased around the yard as children, were lurking beneath the big oaks, wings extended and mouths open, panting in the heat. As Carina stepped out, she felt an almost physical weight descend onto her shoulders, the humidity stifling.

"_Abuela_?" Carina called, then swore and said again, in English, "Gran?" She was surprised by how muffled her voice sounded in the oppressive silence. One of her grandmother's goats bleated weakly in response and Carina scanned the yard automatically, seeing that all was in order. Her grandmother was nearer 95 than 94 and these days, Carina always checked, half expecting to find the old woman in trouble of some sort. Or dead.

Her grandmother's house wasn't the original, built by Carina's great-grandfather. The original house had been a good deal smaller, and a fire had taken care of it long ago. This house was good sized, and well kept, even in her grandmother's advanced age. When Carina was little, the yard had been partly lawn that her grandfather had kept watered and well groomed, but when he had died ten years before, Carina's grandmother had allowed her flower and vegetable beds to consume the grass. Neat stone steps went up to the front porch, which was carefully screened against mosquito season. Pots of flowers thrived on each step, spilling green tendrils down the stones and into the flowerbeds on either side. Carina looked around. In fact, everything but the animal life seemed to be thriving the maddening heat and moisture, the flower beds were a tangle of green and bright flowers…

"Carina!" Carina jumped, and then turned, offering a sweaty smile to the old lady who had alighted on to the top step. Her grandmother had been stunningly beautiful, even in her fifties when Carina had been little. Now, even wizened and shrunk, she was still quite a lovely creature. Tiny and delicate in every way, the little woman was unbowed by age and embraced Carina with brisk strength. "You look well, skinny!" She poked Carina's side, pinching at section of skin. "That boyfriend of yours should feed you."

"I told you last week Gran, Sam and I—"

"Nevermind, nevermind! Come in." She ignored Carina's protest that she needed her overnight bag and dragged her inside immediately. Carina had convinced her grandmother to get an air-conditioner two years ago, so she was rather surprised to discover that the inside of the house was as sweltering as the outside.

"Gran—what happened to the airconditioner?" Carina demanded, as she was herded from the entry way and down the hall towards the kitchen. Her grandmother waved the question away, impatiently.

"It's broken. Lemonade? And you can tell me about your trip." Her grandmother kept a firm grip on Carina's arm, yanking her into the kitchen and plopping her down in a chair. A second later, a glass of lemonade was pressed into her hand.

"Long, as usual. That road gran…"

"I know Carina, I know. I just don't have the money to have it graded, you know." Her grandmother was bustling about—Carina wondered that the old woman seemed to barely notice the stifling heat. Carina gulped at her lemonade, feeling minimal relief as the icy liquid slid down her throat.

"I told you last week, "Carina said patiently, "Gregorio and I can come out with his grader—"

"How are your brothers? And all the animals?"

"They're fine, Gregorio and his wife have moved into that expensive condo they wanted, Benito phoned me last night and said to say thank you for the package you sent him. I have no idea how you know _where_ to send it…"Carina trailed off, her grandmother appeared to be only half listening. She frowned, but went on. "Some lady in Tellison dropped off a stray she found yesterday. He's a little skinny but he's settling in ok with the other dogs. Gregorio's wife is looking after the animals for me again tonight. She likes the cats but Gregorio won't let her have—"

"Do you think it would be terribly inconvenient for you dear, if you went home tonight?" Her grandmother asked, in a nonchalant tone. Carina froze.

"Why?" She demanded when she'd manage to collect her thoughts, "Gran it's a goddamned six hour drive then!"

"Watch your tongue!" Her grandmother turned and in one fluid motion slapped Carina's nearest wrist with a wooden spoon. Carina swore again and stood hurriedly, apologizing when the spoon was waved at her again. "I know it's inconvenient Carina, but I've got a few friends coming for the evening and I'd forgotten that tonight was your night…"

"What friends!" Carina demanded. As far as she'd known, her grandmother lived like a little hermit out here in the woods. She was irritated, and confused at her grandmother's insistence. What could be going on?

"Just a few friends from town. We haven't seen each-other in a long time. You can stay for dinner dear, and I'll send you back with a few things for Gregorio and Benito." Her grandmother was positively chattering and Carina narrowed her eyes. Her grandmother was 95 for Christ's sake but she'd never seemed senile before now!

"Gran…what's going on?" Carina demanded, she looked around the kitchen, checking that everything looked in place. It did, not a towel out of place. Except…except the bowl by the sink. A towel hung from it, soaked in something phosphorescent and green. Now that she thought about it, there was an odd smell in the heavy, damp air. Something musky, almost sweet. "Gran…what is that?" She pointed at the bowl, rising from her chair again to start to cross the room.

"Nothing!" Her grandmother dove for the bowl, but Carina was faster, whisking it up off the counter and picking up the rag. "Carina, you will put that down immediately!"

"What is this stuff?" Carina demanded. She dipped a finger into the sticky green mass on the rag, and rubbed it between her fingers. It was slippery, and viscous, almost like blood. And it stank, a pungent smell, like rotting fruit. "Gran….is this some kind of…drug?" She couldn't believe she was saying it, and she felt a wash of relief when her grandmother stopped in her tracks and stared at her, incredulous.

"Carina Selene Torrez! How _dare _you suggest such a thing!" Her grandmother was truly incensed and Carina set the bowl aside, relieved.

"If you're not making pot-brownies out here, then what the hell is going on Gran? Why do I have to go home tonight!" Carina glowered at her grandmother, "Listen Gran, we let you live out here because we know it would kill you to take you away from this place, but if you're going to start acting weird, I'm going to draw the line!"

Over their heads, Carina heard a soft _thump_. Both women froze. Carina looked up. She listened, and another _thump_ sounded, louder this time. Damn squirrels in the attic again! Carina looked down to say something to her Gran, but saw the look on her grandmother's face. Not squirrels. Definitely not squirrels. Carina dashed for the door, her grandmother yelling at her.

There was more green stuff on the stairs, little dribbles of it as if something had leaked. Carina took them two at a time, heading for the landing, her grandmother yelling behind her in panic. Carina reached the landing and looked down the hall towards the bedrooms. The window at the end had been smashed inwards, debris and glass all over the floor. The crumpled remains of the air conditioner lay in a heap halfway down the hallway. One of the bedroom doors was askew—her bedroom door, as it happened. It was nearest the shattered window, opposite the tiny upstairs bathroom.

Carina knew her grandmother's house like the back of her hand. That room was over the kitchen. She stood at the end of the hall, by the stairs, contemplating her options. Her grandmother was on the stairs now, but she couldn't make it up fast. Carina took a deep breath and started down the hall.

There was a good deal of the green stuff by the broken window, shards were coated with it, a big smear on one wall. Carina was beginning to get an ugly feeling, a very ugly feeling indeed. She wiped sweat from her eyes, pushing back her tangled black hair, and turned to face the broken door. There was a handprint on the doorjamb, smeared in green. A really big fucking handprint. Carina glanced back down the hallway, her Grandmother was almost to the top of the stairs. Swearing under her breath, Carina reached out and shoved the door open. And faced what had to be the biggest shock of her life.

End note: Thank you so much and please review, they give the soul joy :D


	2. Chapter 2

Authors Note: hello everyone! I was rather overwhelmed and gratified by the response this story has gotten, and I'm sincerely grateful to each my reviewers and to everyone who has favorited this story, even though it was just the first chapter! Thank you, thank you so much all! So, yes. Anyways :) yes, Carina and her family are Hispanic, though I will be including only a little of her native tongue for easy reading purposes. thank you guys again so much and I sincerely hope my story continues to amuse! Naja

Disclaimer: if this were mine...*sighs* but it's not, definitely not.

Her grandmother reached her, Carina still stood in the doorway, staring in shock into her tiny bedroom. Neither woman said a word, but stood contemplating their separate reactions in silence, the heavy air a blanket around the entire scene. Finally, Carina stirred and managed a weak swear, before stepping into the room.

The man was huge. So huge in fact that he hadn't fit on her bed, but lay sprawled on top of two of her grandmother's best quilts, in the narrow space between the bed and the opposite wall. His head rested atop her low shoe-chest. The green stuff was, in fact, coming from him. And there was quite a lot of it spread all over the place. It looked like he'd thrashed about a bit before finally collapsing, her pictures had been torn from the walls and her desk was now missing a leg, her chair lay smashed in one corner. Carina stood, tentatively, just inside the door, staring at the massive man who lay in her room. Finally, after a long, long silence, Carina managed to speak.

"Jesus Gran!"Carina rounded on her grandmother, who was looking distinctly sheepish now. "What the hell is going on around here! WHO THE HELL IS THAT?"

"Carina, language." Her grandmother said weakly. The little old woman was wringing her hands now, her hair coming down from its braid and flying about her head in the thin little wisps. For the first time, she suddenly looked her age. "And don't yell, you might wake him."

"Wake him? Oh I'm going to wake him all right. Wake up buddy! Get your ass up! Just who do you think you are, breaking into an old woman's home and—"Carina charged across the space, livid and too mad to think about what she was doing. She stood over him for a minute, glowering. He didn't move. He really was massive, standing at least a foot over Carina's own six-foot, and wide, built like a lean body-builder. The green stuff had clotted and dried over his skin, her grandmother had obviously tried to stop the leaking by stuffing kitchen towels into the worst of it, and from this distance—right on top of him—she could see deep, raw rents in his skin. No, couldn't be his skin. He was wearing a suit—she could see the strange texture of the material, the warm browns and deep oranges of it's coloration. A really weird Halloween costume or something. She kicked him. He didn't budge.

"Wake up _pendejo_!"

"Carina—no!" Her grandmother hissed in dismay. Carina was too mad. She'd lived in big cities for a little while, she knew all about the worlds weirdos.

"You've got twenty seconds to get your ass up before I call the cops!" Carina kicked him again. No response. His shoulder was certainly solid. Carina studied him again. The suit was certainly very complete. Big, clawed feet had only four toes, each ending in a sharp looking talon, the long, firm legs and massive, muscular torso were clad in some sort of wiry mesh, the private bits were covered by a woven loincloth. Carina studied the suit's torso interestedly. The green stuff must be some sort of operating fluid, like oil. She leaned over to study it. The suit was very realistic—she could see the edges of raw skin on the surface, as if the punctures and rents were actually wounds. She snorted. The big shoulders were hidden by big metal plates, decorated with little animal skulls and symbols.

His face was covered with some sort of mask. Carina kicked him a third time and shouted. No response. A horrible thought suddenly occurred to her—he might actually be _dead_. Hell, in the day's heat wearing a suit like that would be suffocating! She knelt and began looking for a way to get the head of the suit off.

"Carina! No!" Her grandmother was hissing from the doorway, Carina shot her a glower and went back to her task. She felt around the throat region, trying to find the seam where the head connected to the shoulders. The suit's material definitely wasn't rubber, and it was warm. And sweaty. Carina shoved away a little shiver of apprehension. Some sort of government experiment no doubt, mechanical fighting armor or something. Failing to find a seam, she studied the head piece carefully, looking for a catch or a latch or something. The head piece was big, the suit must weigh a ton! The detailing was beautiful actually, little bristly hairs sprouted from the material around the temples, the domed head sloped backwards into a ridge, and soft tentacles made dread-lock like hair. Carina reached out and touched one, and was surprised to find them fleshy, and warm. Little metal beads and bits of bone were hung through them, and she was reminded of images of native peoples, decorating themselves with little trophies. The whole effect was rather tribal actually. Carina shook her head and studied the face mask.

It was aquiline, almost felionoid with chiseled cheekbones, two eyes plates and a heavy brow ridge, a sharply inclining forehead that went all the way back to where the tentacle things sprouted. Carina didn't like how still the guy was lying, and decided that she'd better figure out a way to get into him, even if she had to cut the damned suit off. She felt around the edges of the face-mask, and discovered two tiny sprockets connected to two tubes, leading down the side of his neck into a small, square metal pod. She pried at the sprockets and was rewarded when, with a little twisting, they gave way and popped off, hissing air that smelled faintly metallic. The mask gave a soft pop, and Carina saw that it had separated from the suit. Relieved that it had been so easy, Carina reached out and lifted the mask from his face—

"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!" Carina dropped the mask and fell backwards, sucking in first one deep breath, and then another. Her heart was thudding with the shock of what she'd found, her thoughts whirling in confusion. Carina's grandmother was muttering to herself, leaning against the doorjamb but Carina ignored her. Slowly, ever so slowly, Carina rose back up onto her feet, and squatted as far from the man as she could get. "It's j-just a fucking suit." She told herself. But that ugly feeling wasn't going away. She shuffled forward, her stomach a tight knot, until she reached the mask that she'd dropped. She picked it up, finding it heavy and rough beneath her fingers. She turned it over and studied the inside. She could see the edge where the mask attached to the face, and there was a metallic sheen to the inside of the eye pieces that suggested they were more a screen than actual eyeholes. She set the mask aside, and crept forward again.

It wasn't a suit. Carina knew it for sure with a kind of sickened twist in her stomach. She looked down into the ugly, terrifying face and knew in her heart that this wasn't a suit. The creature, for creature it was and not man, lay unmoving, but alive. She could feel his breath against her face when she leaned over him, faintly sweet and musky.

The face was vaguely human, in that it had two eyes and a mouth, but in every other way it was alien. Alien. _Alien_. The word penetrated Carina's mind and she swallowed noisily, her pulse racing, her mind reeling. She stared into the face, trying to make sense of it all. The eyes were closed, and deeply set beneath a heavy brow ridge. Wide cheekbones, and no nose that she could see. The mouth was a huge affair, with four mandibles, two on top and two on the bottom, like a spider's jaws. They were fleshy, and each mandible was armed with a tusk on the end. The mandibles protected the actual mouth parts, which—when Carina had worked up the nerve—she revealed when she gently pulled back the left lower mandible and peeked beneath it. The actual mouth was lipless, and toothy, but at least it was the right size for a mouth. Size being relative, since this being could squash her with one big hug. Carina swallowed again and backed away, shaking. She made it too the door before throwing up, and shoving past her grandmother who was muttering,

"I told you not too, you never listen to me, nobody ever listens…"

* * *

><p>They sat in the kitchen. Both women seemed unaware of the heat now, both sitting with un-drunk cups of lemonade in their hands. There had been silence for nearly two hours, before Carina finally managed to stir.<p>

"When did it…"

"Last night. Around three." Her grandmother took a shaky sip of her lemonade. Ice rattled uneasily when she set it down. "And he's not an _it _dear. He's definitely a he…bigger than your grandfather—"

"Gran!" Carina snapped, disgusted. "You looked?"

"Didn't have too!"

"You're _muy loco_—you've got a damned alien hiding in my bedroom and you were just going to let me _leave_! What if, when he wakes up, he decides to kill you? Or me? Or both of us? This is crazy! Get your purse, we're leaving." Carina rose to her feet and reached for her grandmother, who pulled her arm away impatiently.

"Carina! Think child! He's badly hurt, he's not going anywhere. He's been unconscious since he collapsed in your bedroom; I'll be very surprised if he ever wakes up, with as much blood as he's lost!"

"I don't care if he _ever_ wakes up!"

"CARINA!" Her grandmother ripped her arm from her grandaughter's grasp and slapped the girl sharply across the cheek. Carina fell back, shocked, fingers pressing the spot where she'd been struck. "What sort of girl did I raise! To leave one of God's creatures helpless in time of need!"

"That's NOT one of God's creatures Gran!" Carina snapped, angry and hurt.

"I don't care what planet he was born on, God is everywhere." Her grandmother stood and collected herself. She seemed to have recovered from the shock earlier and was glowering with as much venom as always, her dark eyes fixed on her granddaughter in a way that Carina remembered all too well. "Now. We are to show mercy to all. You're so fond of animals Carina, I _know _how many dogs and cats you have back at that little shack of yours, and you can do one more kindness by showing a little of that mercy to our guest."

"Gran. This. Is. _Insane_. That thing—"

"He."

"_He_ is dangerous Gran. He's big, he's ugly, and I have very little doubt that he'll be quite unfriendly when he wakes up—"

"Do no harm unto others, others will do no harm unto you!"

"THAT'S NOT HOW THE REAL WORLD WORKS!" Carina shouted and her grandmother glowered at her fixedly. Without a word, her grandmother went to the sink and retrieved the bowl with the blood soaked towel. In stony silence, she rinsed the towel and filled the bowl with water. Silently and with a look that had silenced just about every argument Carina had ever had with her grandmother, she held the bowl out to Carina. "Gran…" Carina wasn't sure what to do now. She couldn't drag the old woman out without hurting her, but she was too damn scared to face what her grandmother was demanding she do. "I can't. I just can't." She turned and left the kitchen, stalking out of the house and slamming the front door behind her.

She sat, knees drawn up, contemplating the insanity of her world on the front steps. She sat there only a few minutes before it occurred to her that if she didn't do it, her Grandmother would and she was up like a shot.

Her grandmother was halfway up the stairs when Carina apprehended her, there was a brief struggle for possession of the bowl before Carina firmly evicted her grandmother downstairs and stood holding the bowl, glowering after her.

"Goddamned crazy old bitty!" Carina swore, her heart thudding. She didn't want to go back into that room. On the other hand, she might as well figure out exactly what it was they were dealing with.

Carina traversed the hallway, her flip-flops crunching on broken glass and bits of plaster. She passed by the destroyed air conditioner and swore again,

"Why couldn't the _bastardo_ come in through the _other_ windows and left the air-conditioner in one piece?" She was swearing because she was terrified. Complaining about the air conditioner gave her brain something else to think about. The door was still open. The beast was still lying there, just as she'd left him.

Carina stood still in the doorway and listened, she could just barely hear his breathing, a soft whistling that seemed very quiet for a creature so large. He lay perfectly still, not a clawed finger nor toe twitched. Carina studied him from afar. Before she'd just assumed that the body beneath the mesh was a suit. Now she knew differently, and studied it with interest. The orange and brown patterning was not unlike a tiger's stripes, with the under color being a kind of bronzy tan. She had taken an anatomy class in college, and looking at him now she realized that his musculature was vastly different from humans, muscles bulging in all the wrong places. At least he had all the right number of joints, even if he didn't have all the right number of toes. She crept into the room and paused a few feet from him. Still nothing. Out cold.

Heart hammering hard against her ribs, Carina slipped forward and knelt shakily beside him, setting the bowl of water next to her and leaning forward to stare into his face. He didn't even twitch a mandible when she poked him experimentally.

"I'm sorry, "Carina said softly, "but for our sake, I really hope you don't wake up." She knew it was probably the meanest thing she'd ever said in her life, but looking down into his alien face, she had never been more scared in her life. This thing was a predator, and it looked a lot more designed to kill than she was. She doubted those fangs were for eating tofu!

Turning her attention to his wounds, she inspected them closely, peeling off some of the kitchen towels her grandmother had laid across him. He had numerous scrapes, all dark green now with dried blood. There was what looked like a deep puncture in his lower abdomen that was still oozing phosphorescent green blood, and four deep lacerations across his chest, and from the seepage coming from under his left shoulder, she guessed there was another one across his back. His right forearm, just above his metal braces, sported what _looked _to her like a very nasty bite. He'd had a run-in with something, that was for sure! Carina wasn't too sure she wanted to know what that something might be, either.

She took a deep breath and imagined that he was just a dog, just a wild dog that somebody had run over and brought to her to take care of. Just a dog. Or a bear. _Yeah_. Carina took another, deeper breath and went to work.

She used the sheets from her bed to bind his wounds as best she could, she didn't think her grandmother had anything bigger than band-aids in her bathroom cupboard, and his wounds certainly weren't band-aid caliber. Her grandmother had done the best she could, trying to stop his bleeding, but without much success. There was a great deal of blood, and by the time she'd finished mopping it up—replenishing her bowl twice from the bathroom across the hall-she was covered in the stuff, hot and sweaty and a little less frightened of him.

What he really needed, was stitches. She dared go downstairs and inquire if her grandmother had a suture kit—and indeed she did, for her goats, she said. Her grandmother seemed to be quite cheerful, now that her recalcitrant grandchild was obeying her orders.

Carina had stitched up quite a few animals in her day, but she was quite dismayed to discover that his skin was so thick the needle would barely go through it. She managed only two of the lacerations before running out of the silk thread, but the third and fourth she managed to close with some of her grandmother's butterfly strips from the medicine cabinet. Upon struggling for ten minutes and managing to roll him up onto his right side, she discovered that the seepage was from a minor cut and by the time she'd finished it had already stopped bleeding, so she wiped it up and lashed it with some of her sheet bandages. The bite needed stitches also—fangs had ripped nasty tears in his skin and a few chunks seemed to be missing, but Carina knew better than to try and close the bite. She had no idea what had bitten him, nor how clean the critter's mouth had been and she wanted that bite open to drain.

When Carina finally sat back on her haunches and wiped sweat from her brow, she glanced at the clock and realized to her chagrin that she'd been playing nurse for almost four hours. Outside the sun had set, and she could hear her grandmother preparing dinner downstairs. At some point, she had turned on the overhead light, but she didn't remember doing that.

"Well. Wasn't that fun..." Carina said sarcastically to her unconscious charge. She leaned over and looked into his face again, studying the unfamiliar outlines with interest. "You know, you're _really_ ugly." She told him. Unconscious and limp as a rag doll, he was a lot less threatening. She wondered what he looked like when he was awake. She reached out, tentatively, and touched his cheek. His skin—which she'd had more than desirous opportunity to fondle over the last three hours—was slightly leathery and smooth. His forehead had mysterious bumps and ridges along it's slope, and the bristly hairs that started at his temples went all the way up along his hairline. Or what passed for his hairline. They made almost eyebrows on his heavy brow as well. The orange and brown patterning made complicated spikes and slashes across his forehead, and she was reminded of some of the less attractive spiders she'd seen in her lifetime. She wondered if the patterning here served the same purpose of defense and camouflage for him as it did for them. She touched one of the bristles and found it spiky, like a cactus.

There was a curious scar on his forehead, just above where the bridge of his nose should be. She traced it, and found it rough and hard, like a burn. Studying it, she decided it wasn't a wound, but a symbol. A series of three slashes, surrounded by a three sided triangle. She frowned, thoughtfully.

It was only a soft sound, but one mandible brushed her forearm and Carina jumped about three feet in the air, giving off a strangled moan in the process and landed all the way across the room, her back pressed against the wall. The creature gurgled again, weakly, and his mandibles twitched. It took a full minute for Carina to peel herself off the wall and work up the nerve to investigate. When she had managed to cross the space and kneel down next to him, she found him still unconscious and still. She let out a shaky sigh and forced herself to grin.

"Jumpy aren't we?" She told herself, "Just shifting in his sleep." But she laid a hand on his shoulder just to be sure.

In flash, one huge hand had caught her arm just below the shoulder and a big face was thrust into hers! Carina opened her mouth to scream, eyes wide and heart hammering a terrified rhythm! Big eyes met hers, they were deep blood orange, and rimmed with thin lashes and mandibles grabbed at her face, tusks digging into her skin as teeth gnashed not far from her flesh! Speechless and terrified, Carina tried to pull back, trying to wrench herself free but the massive creature held her tight! She was sure he was going to rip her throat out, or tear her arm off or… she held his gaze, unable to look away as she strained to get free…and suddenly the eyes rolled back in his head and he fell backwards. Of course, his hand didn't relax and she was dragged down with him and across him, ending up sprawled across his chest, her face still pressed against his.

She hadn't realized she was crying until she manage to pry the fingers loose and wrench herself away. To stunned to move far, she managed to crawl off of him and lurch a few feet away before collapsing in a heap and shaking uncontrollably.

"Goddamnit." She whispered, rubbing her arm where he had gripped her, not surprised to find bruises blossoming under her skin, and a few narrow rents where his claws had dragged at her. Finally, with more bravery than she felt, she managed to address her abuser, "That's gratitude for you. And you pulled out some of your stitches!" She wasn't going to fix them for him either. She wasn't going _near_ him unless she had to. She had half a mind to go downstairs and knock her grandmother out with a frying pan, and drag her unconscious body into the truck. Let the fucker have the house. Who cared?

She stood, brushed herself off and made it into the bathroom. She wasn't surprised to find scratches on her face from his tusks, and a narrow bite mark beside her mouth where his teeth had found purchase. It oozed blood lazily and she found herself being very glad that he hadn't been able to really get her. She washed the cuts and the bite and held a cloth to her face until she'd stopped bleeding. "_Bastardo!" _She said shakily and lurched downstairs. She made it into the kitchen and sat down heavily in one of the chairs. Her grandmother turned to her and her old eyes lit immediately on the raw bite and the swelling, darkening bruises. Carina made no motion to hide them either.

"Oh lord!" Her grandmother managed, her eyes going immediately to the ceiling.

"No, he's still out. _This_ was a reflex." Carina pointed at her bleeding face. "Gran, I'm telling you. _He's dangerous_. And there's something else…" She trailed off. The thought had formed in her mind while she worked through the routine of stitching up the monster's wounds and had aggressively dogged her ever since. The bite on his forearm….she had studied it with interest and hadn't liked her conclusions.

Carina liked animals. She was one of those children that had arrived home quite often with some stray that had been drawn to her like a magnet. She had done her time in animal shelters, emergency clinics and finally, as a vet's assistant for a few years out of college until she had decided she hated the medical scene. She had seen her fair share of dog bites, broken bones and infections. She knew what bites looked like. She'd even gotten a few nasty ones herself.

"Gran…he's got a bite on his arm. Big." She mimed how wide the mouth must have been, holding her hands up a good twelve inches apart. "Now…whatever it was it had teeth like a shark." She held up what she'd pried from a deeper section of lacerated flesh. The small, shiny object sat like an angry witness in her outstretched palm. Her grandmother came forward and peered over it, squinting. "It's a tooth. It's broken, must have gotten caught on his metal brace, but if this is just a fragment than I could estimate that tooth was almost an inch long. Or two inches. Gran…I've never seen a tooth like this." Carina studied the offending object in her palm. It was slender, and silvery, almost translucent. The jagged edge was where it had broken, but the other end was just as sharp—almost razorlike—and Carina wasn't having any fun imagining where it might have come from.

"So….what are you telling me Carina?" Her grandmother demanded. She had gone back to the stove and stood stirring a pot of something with more determination than it needed. Carina took a deep breath, let out and cursed every god that might be listening.

"Do you still have Grandad's shotgun?"

End note: Thanks for reading! *waves happily*


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: not mine. if it was, there would be a small black kitten in every frame. no...not really.

Author's Note: Thank you so much reviewers! Really, it means a lot that everybody is enjoying this as much as I am. That being said, I'm not horribly pleased with this chapter, but I was told by my personal critic that if I didn't stop fiddling I was never going to get past it, so here it is. Please enjoy, a lot more adventure to come! And thank you again, from the bottom of my heart! Naja

* * *

><p>Carina stood on the porch, heart thudding, fingers wrapped tightly around the barrel of her grandfather's shotgun. She didn't even know if it worked. She wasn't terribly sure she knew <em>how<em> it worked. The whole plan felt stupid.

"Carina…" Her grandmother stood behind her, a small backpack in her hands, fingers knotted tightly in the fabric. She had listened, calmly, quietly, while Carina explained the plan that had formed in her mind in the hours of darkness she had sat on the porch keeping watch. She had protested weakly with the first part of the plan but had subsided as Carina carefully outlined each aspect of her idea. The logic was sound, even if it was incredibly, incredibly stupid.

Carina now turned to her grandmother and took the proffered backpack, managing a small and weak smile. She was scared, more scared even than when she'd been grabbed by the monster lying on her bedroom floor. She really, really didn't want to do it. But there weren't many other options.

Carina had sat on the front steps all night, listening nervously to every sound. She didn't like the idea that whatever had tried to kill their hulking guest might still be prowling around. She was pretty sure that the way he'd been bleeding, he'd left a trail a two year old could follow. She also knew that there was no way to get help. Who would she call? Her brothers? If Gregorio could pull himself away from his car lot for ten minutes it would be a miracle—besides, he was so well grounded in reality he'd have them _both_ committed from afar and leave the rest to science. Benito? If she could even _find_ Benito she'd consider herself lucky. The cops? One possibility. Carina had broached the subject with her grandmother, only to discover herself up against a solid wall at the very suggestion and the old woman made a good point. She would have to lie to get the cops to come out, and the minute they discovered the lurker upstairs they would more than likely shoot him, or worse, call in somebody to take him away. Her grandmother had, so she informed her irritated granddaughter, seen enough X-Files to know what they did to aliens once they caught them. Carina had scowled and tried to argue and her grandmother had stubbornly refused. She was willing, it seemed, to sacrifice herself to protect somebody she deemed helpless. Carina thought that was all well and good—except that she was currently sacrificing her granddaughter too!

So. Option one. Wait for the alien to recover—hope that he _did_ recover—and hope he didn't believe they were trying to dissect him themselves, while waiting to find out if the thing that had attacked him found where he'd gone off too. Option Two. Go hunting for the alien's craft, and maybe, find him help in the process. Carina had gone with option two, mostly because it gave her something do other than sit upstairs and watch the alien sleep. She was decidedly not thinking about all the things that could go wrong with the plan. Including _finding _the thing that had bitten him.

Carina took a deep breath and started down the stairs, going around the side of the house to hopefully pickup the trail where he'd broken in. The upstairs window.

Inspecting the damage from the outside was almost comical. More glass and broken siding had rained down into the flowerbeds below, and Carina could see deep gouges and a few broken slats where he'd obviously had to scramble a bit to clamber in. She smiled faintly, imagining him performing the ridiculous feat with a similar expression to one of her cats when they'd miscalculated how far it was to the top of the bookshelf. Examining the flower bed and the back wall, she decided that he'd obviously not come on foot. She looked up and examined the tree line. There was a broken branch almost level with the window, and she could see a faint green smear across the shattered bark, that might have been sap, or it might have been more blood.

"Great. A climber." Carina swore angrily and kicked a stone, sending it scuttling into the underbrush. She didn't know how to track! She didn't know how to fire a gun! She was heading into the woods with little more than a utility knife, a lunch and a shotgun that might or might not work, with no experience with any of it! Damnit! "Goddamnit Gran!" She swore again and stepped into the treeline, approximately beneath the broken branch and looked up. She contemplated once again sneaking into the house to call the cops. What would she say? She didn't really care, as long as she and her grandmother survived. A little worm of guilt wiggled in her gut that she would turn him over to the government…just to save her hide. They would kill him. They would dissect him. It _would_ be wrong of her. She growled and tried to decide if she felt that she could live with the guilt.

She had almost decided she could, when she heard her grandmother singing inside. It was an old lullaby, but sung in the traditional Spanish. She had sung that song to Carina when she was little. She was probably singing it to the damned alien now. Carina glowered at the upstairs window and sighed. Her grandmother obviously had reserves of goodness that she hadn't passed onto her granddaughter. Carina swung away from the house and stepped into the trees.

At first, Carina wondered how the hell she was going to follow the trail of something that had obviously entered the house from twenty feet up. Her doubt was assuaged by the discovery, five feet into the trees, that he had been bleeding more than a little bit when he had run into the house.

The first traces were well above her head, but she could still see them, faintly glowing even in the afternoon light. Some of it had spattered down onto the leaves, and once, after a ten minute hike or so, she found a small pool that had dripped down the trunk of a tree. She might not be a tracker, but he left a pretty obvious trail.

If possible, the heat was even more intense than the previous day, and Carina had to keep stopping to drink thirstily from one of the bottles of icewater her grandmother had sent with her. She was still wearing her shorts and teeshirt from the day before, and before she'd gone ten feet into the trees they were plastered to her with sweat.

She had played often the in the woods as a child, and the familiarity of the surroundings was somewhat soothing. The walk was easy, and the trail she was following wasn't hard to find. He'd even taken to the ground at one point, she found a spot where she guessed he might have actually fallen from the scattered leaves and smears of dried green goop. No sign of his attacker though. She wasn't sure if that was lucky or not.

Around midday, she stopped to eat, forcing the food down her throat despite the heat and finishing it off with a big swallow of her now-warm water. No sign of anything except the trail she followed. Which was getting harder for her to follow.

She guessed he'd been weakening by the time he'd launched himself through her grandmother's top-story window, so the trail had been easier to follow because he was clumsy, snapping branches, bleeding excessively, even running along the ground. Now the trail was getting harder, she hadn't found any blood in quite a while and she was just guessing his trajectory. She had no idea what to do now.

She had been smart enough to mark her own trail, twigs placed in the shape of arrows every ten feet or so, so she didn't need to worry about getting back…but she hadn't found anything that would help them either. Carina leaned back against the truck of a tree, and sighed heavily, mopping her sodden hair from her eyes. No plan. Not really. She scowled and wished that she'd convinced her grandmother to go into a nursing home the year before. Then she wouldn't be in this mess.

A twig snapped, a soft pop that brought Carina upright in an instant, eyes wide, heart thudding, fear riveting her to the spot, every sense on alert. Nothing. Silence. She tried to convince herself that it was just a dove taking off, or a fox in the underbrush. Both were quite possible. But she couldn't, because she knew damn well what was _also _possible.

She stood and shouldered her backpack. Sitting in one spot contemplating her failures was a stupider plan than wandering around the woods, hoping to find a clue. She lifted the shotgun and checked that there were still two shells loaded into the double barrel. She knew that much at least. She listened. Nothing. Silence in the forest. Not a bird cried, not a squirrel chattered. Nothing. _Too_ _much_ nothing. Her skin began to crawl, slowly, and she started off in the direction she'd decided was most likely for him to have travelled in.

As she walked, Carina began to realize that she'd felt watched for a while. She hadn't really paid any attention—she wasn't a damn soldier after all—but the creepy feeling was beginning to wear at her nerves. She'd found a sign a little while back, a smear of blood on a low growing bush and encouraged, she'd picked up her pace. She wasn't sure if she was just being paranoid, but she wasn't willing to bet her life on the chance.

She almost fell into the scene, she was so intent on listening with every nerve for whatever it was that _might_ be following her. She tripped on a dead branch and stumbled to a halt, realizing in an instant that she had found _part_ of what she was looking for.

A battle had taken place here, just recently. Carina didn't need to be a soldier to recognize that a patch of forest torn to hell was a battleground. Roots uprooted, a sapling tree as big around as her thigh snapped and crumpled, leaves, stones and bark in every direction. Claw marks on every tree, and blood—yes, this was where their guest had met his unfortunate opponent. Phosphorescent green was spattered everywhere, and she found part of one of his chest plates, talon marks scored into the tough surface. She found what looked like a gun a few feet away, half buried under debris. She hefted it, curious and then jumped, then realized there had been nothing to jump at. Just a feeling. She shoved both the chest plate and the gun down into her pack. She might as well return them to their owner.

Looking about the scene, there was nothing to tell her _what_ he'd been battling…except…except the stuff smeared over the trunk of one of the trees. If Carina hadn't known better, she'd have thought it was a giant booger. Sticky, translucent, and viscous it hung from the tree in ropy strands, partly solidified, partly liquid it looked almost like rubber cement before it had dried. Carina didn't dare touch the stuff, but poked it with a stick to see how to reacted. Just slime, she decided. Slime from _what_ she didn't want to know.

A trace of something on the wind brought Carina's head up. Smoke? She turned her head and sniffed. Yes, definitely smoke. The wind blew into her face and Carina headed into it, following her nose.

The crash site wasn't far from the scene of the battle. Carina stood at the top of a gulley and looked down on a bonafide alien spacecraft, feeling an ugly sense of foreboding. It wasn't very big, about the size of a mini-bus or a camper actually, obviously made for a single person. Or single alien, in this case. The metal was the same color and sheen as the alien's armor, though scored and blackened by the intense inferno that had obviously raged inside it. Roughly pod shaped, she could clearly see where the door had been forced open for him to crawl out and she wondered suddenly if a good deal of his injuries hadn't come from the crash itself, instead of an animal attack. Except the bite. That had _definitely_ come from an animal.

When she'd worked up the nerve she clambered down into the gulley to investigate. The pod had landed nose-down in the earth, burrowing a narrow furrow for a good twenty feet before skidding to a stop at an angle. The fires had died out inside, though a trail of smoke still seeped from the scorched innards near the back, and Carina stayed well clear just in case it decided to flare up again. The doorway was a circle of black, and she reached into her backpack for the flashlight she had brought along—just in case. Switching it on, she shined it around inside hurriedly, and found only an empty cockpit. The controls were blackened, and somewhere inside electricity sparked, but Carina worked up the nerve and slid inside, careful to keep one eye out for any sign of movement not her own.

She was not so paranoid however, as to miss the little thrill of excitement she felt as she realized she was standing in the kilted entrance to an alien spacecraft. First human to set foot there. She drew in a small breath and let it out, and found a small smile tugging at her lips followed by a tiny, ridiculous little squeak of excitement. She was so embarrassed that she automatically checked to see if anybody had heard. Of course, nobody had.

The interior was obviously made for a much larger person. Carina was considered quite tall for a girl, but the ceiling was well over her head, higher than she could reach even on tiptoe. The interior lighting was down, but Carina's flashlight picked out as much detail as the relatively small space afforded. The cockpit was small enough for a single occupant, with a small storage space behind the massive pilot's chair. Carina investigated it, and found a few toppled, blackened crate-like objects but nothing that looked like medicine, or even weapons. A toasted net attached to the wall held a few possibly promising objects, and after a minute or two Carina managed to extricate two of the more interesting looking cylinders. It took her another minute to find and depress the button on the side, only to discover herself faced with what was obviously rations of some kind. Or at least, she assumed so; she couldn't discern another purpose for the little squares of soft, crumbly blue-green stuff. It smelled sort of like blue-cheese. She closed the container and shoved it into her pack. Might as well take him something to eat, too. The second container proved more helpful—an array of objects that might, if one squinted properly, be medical supplies. It went into the pack along-side the rest of her treasures.

Another quick look around yielded nothing further, and Carina was about to shoulder her pack and leave when something caught her eye. A little patch of ooze that was lurking near the entrance. She wasn't sure it had been there when she'd come in. Her stomach tightened down in an instant and she realized to her chagrin that she'd gotten too excited and hadn't kept a clear watch on the entrance to the pod!

She hefted the shotgun, and pushed sweat from her eyes. Her heart was pounding in her ears. She pulled the pack on and settled it, keeping the shotgun trained on the entrance. She could see the barrel shaking—what a coward she was!

Stepping forward slowly, trying not to lose her footing on the sloping floor, she headed inexorably towards the circle of light, and the outside. The ooze hadn't dried yet, and it glistened in the sunlight. Carina felt her heart stutter and she fought to control the urge to run to the back of the pod and crouch there, never to come out again. How stupid was it, to come out into the woods—_knowing _that there was something dangerous out there?

Carina stepped carefully into the entrance, remembering to check both sides and above herself. Nothing. No more ooze, no footprints. Nothing. Shaking, she stepped out and stood, listening.

She almost didn't hear it. A tiny, tiny _hiss_ and Carina whirled, finger already depressing the trigger just in time to see something black and shiny leap at her from the nose of the pod!

She screamed, but her scream was lost in the deafening blast from the gun that slammed into her shoulder and sent her flying! Carina tumbled end over end and slammed hard against the pod's outer wall, smacking her head painfully but she was on her feet before she'd really even landed!

By some miracle, by some _incredible_ act of fate, she had managed to hit it. She had just enough time to realize the immobile corpse she had created before she swore and clutched at her shoulder. She hadn't braced the thing properly and it came to her in an abrupt wave of pain that she'd probably just dislocated her shoulder.

With a groan, she sank to her knees and sobbed, her hand on the trigger of the shotgun numb and her right side a mask of throbbing agony! Through the surprised pain, Carina heard a branch crunch and looked up, fear coursing through the pain and she saw another lithe black body sliding, serpentine, over the corpse of it's brethren snarling at her. The thing was hideous. And huge. She hadn't realized just how big the first one was, she hadn't really gotten to see it. She really, _really _wished she couldn't see this one. The pain suddenly seemed less, her heart a hard, hammering roar in her ears. It had four limbs, the back two more developed for bipedal walking. A long, barbed tail, a huge shiny head sloping back from a toothy, slimy lipped mouth that bore four familiar mandibles. No eyes, only huge fucking teeth and slippery, deadly claws. Carina tried to lift the shotgun, but a snapping agony in her shoulder didn't let her lift it more than a few inches! She yanked the gun from her nerveless right hand and lifted it with her left, she couldn't brace it but she didn't care! The creature snarled at her, roaring like a lion and lunging right at her!

Carina closed her eyes, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

><p>She woke, slowly, dizzy and sweating. Her immediate reaction was to roll onto her side and throw up, heaving painfully as her right shoulder screamed in protest. Her head throbbed almost worse than her shoulder, and she felt warm liquid dribble down into her eyes. It took her a moment to collect herself, forcing her whirling thoughts into a coherent stream. Fear hit her first, and she forced herself to sit up, leaning to the side to vomit again as another wave of pain hit her from her shoulder, and from her head.<p>

The shot gun lay beside her, still clamped in her hand, and she guessed from the smear across the action that the recoil had brought the gun up and slammed it into her head. She pried her fingers loose and inspected the damage, finding a narrow slice at her temple and a large egg. She'd been lucky—lucky it hadn't split her skull wide open! Her shoulder was still screaming in pain, but she turned her attention to the hulking shape that had landed at her feet. She had killed it. Killed _it._ She shuddered with reaction—she had never killed _anything_ before. Seen many things die yes, but she had never actually intentionally taken the life of something…

Her head throbbed as she pulled her shaking legs backwards away from the steaming corpse. Steaming? She had struck the creature dead in the face, and it's head had exploded with the force of the shell. The stuff inside its head, brains and bits of bone and other things, had scattered outwards and had struck the pod's side and soaked into the dirt. Everywhere it had struck had been pocked, as if by acid. Carina forced herself to crawl away a little. She had to get back. Home. She hurt, her stomach was retching painfully and when she managed to turn her aching eyes towards the sky, she was horrified to discover that it was already dusk. How long had she been unconscious?

Forcing her jellied legs under her she managed to lever herself onto her feet, holding the shotgun in nerveless fingers, she inspected her kills. Having never killed anything before, Carina was rather glad there was nothing remotely familiar or friendly about these two.

It's body mostly skeletal, and every surface was black and shiny. When Carina had worked up the nerve, she loosed the shotgun and passed a hand over it domed head. Smooth and sticky and cold. She wiped her fingers on her shorts, joining the slime with a hundred other filthy bits she didn't want to think about.

The face was vaguely familiar in shape, though it was probably just the presence of mandibles. It's mouth were thin lipped and full of hard, translucent razor-like teeth. Carina knew, without a doubt where that fragment in her charge's arm had come from. But what was it? She knew there was nothing like it on earth, so it must have come with him. Were there more of them? How many? She was loath to think of her grandmother alone in that big empty house without a way to defend herself. Hell, Carina knew with no sense of false pride or modesty that the only reason she was alive was pure, stupid luck. And the reflexes of the young, as her grandmother would say.

"He would know." The words almost didn't come from herself and she started, wincing in pain as she jarred her shoulder. "He would know what they are." And he would. One of this lot had taken a chunk out of his arm, and they were definitely _not_ earth critters. She had to know if there were more of them. But how to ask him? Suppose he didn't speak English? Carina studied the two carcasses in front of her. They were too big and definitely too heavy for her to carry or drag far. So…

She worked quickly, going back inside the shuttle and pulling bits of the torn storage net down, dragging it behind her as she went. There were no cutting tools, but on inspecting the neck and finding it relatively fragile, Carina reloaded the shotgun, aimed carefully and fired! The shot reverberated and jarred her shoulder so badly she had to squat, panting in pain for a few minutes before she could manage to inspect her handiwork. The thin neck had exploded into two pieces and Carina smiled in grim, pained satisfaction. She had hours of very heavy work ahead of her—especially since the bleeding neck was enthusiastically eating a hole in the ground under it—but she would have her damned answers, or else.

End Note: As always, thank you and review! Another chapter up soon. Possibly tomorrow :) :)


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Nope, still not mine. Doesn't mean i don't wreak havoc occasionally...

Author's Note: Ok, ok...so I lied that I would be updating the next day...well, it wasn't a lie. I underestimated how much havoc my week could throw at me. Or possibly two weeks... either way, I survived! Congrats to me! Anyways, thank you so much for your reviews, I promise I'll be better about replying to each of your personally, but here's a heart-felt thank you to each and every one of you! Please enjoy! Naja

By the time Carina dragged her weary body back into her grandmother's yard it was well past dark. Every light in the house blazed, and Carina had a thin smile on her lips, to hear her grandmother's voice coming from the upstairs window. Talking to herself again no doubt.

The heavy sack she dragged behind her had begun to weigh like lead, but Carina had promised herself the satisfaction of waking her guest up rather rudely once she returned. She took another deep breath and hauled herself forward.

"_Abuela_?" Carina called wearily as she pulled her load up the last step and into the front hall.

"Carina! I thank god!" Her grandmother appeared at the top of the stairs, looking down at her granddaughter with thinly disguised relief and pleasure. "I was so worried…"

"Not worried enough to call the cops perhaps?" Carina asked sweetly as she dragged her burden to the base of the stairs.

"Carina…" Her grandmother chided her, then squinted. "What's that?"

"I found what made a mess of our friend. At least, I think I did. I _hope_ I did. They're dead now."

"He's awake." Her grandmother said slowly and Carina smiled as she hauled her load up the stairs, one at a time.

"Good. I've got a few questions for him."

Carina was supremely surprised to discover that her grandmother had gone and done some common sense thinking while Carina was away. Upon entering the bedroom, Carina was confronted with their charge, now upright and braced against the wall, with his hands tied neatly in front of him with tractor chains, securely padlocked and a second chain that led down to his ankles, which were similarly bound and padlocked. Carina looked back at her grandmother in surprise.

"I'm not _entirely _without common sense." Her grandmother said testily and pushed passed her. The beast was watching Carina, fully awake now and looking extremely annoyed. Unless he always looked like that, after all Carina couldn't be sure.

Her grandmother might have chained him, but he was certainly comfortable, he had what looked like every pillow in the house behind him and his legs were covered with two quilts. In the suffocating heat, looking at him all bundled up turned Carina's stomach.

"_Hola_."Carina said as politely as she could. She wasn't afraid of him now, not hogtied and she could see that though he was awake and aware, his mandibles drooped and his eyes shifted listlessly. Still worn out from his own misadventure? Too bad! "You've got a lot of explaining to do." She knelt and extricated her prize from the netting. "Not least of all, what the hell _these_ are." She held the head up. It had stopped oozing acid, so she held it by the neck, facing him and she jumped, startled when he suddenly squealed in apparent shock. She sincerely hoped he wasn't going to keep shrieking like that, her shoulder hurt, she was filthy, sweat, bloody and covered in slime and bits of tree. She was in no real mood for dramatics. She peeked around her prize to find him staring at her, eyes wide, mandibles flared as if he'd never seen such a creature in his life! She wasn't sure whether his expression was meant for her, or for her prize. Either way, she approached, dumped the head at his feet and sat, cross legged next to him. She was so damn tired. "Wanna tell me what this is?" The creature regarded the severed head for a long, long moment before looking back at her, mandibles clicking together in agitation. She shifting her pack from her shoulders, whimpering a little when she had to extricate it from her wounded shoulder, and finally set the back down. Opening it, she pulling out the two cylinders, his gun and the bit of breast plate. His eyes followed all of these movements, and they widened when she pressed the buttons on the cylinders, to expose their contents. She displayed them. "You want these, you've gotta tell me what that is." She pointed at the beast.

"What if he doesn't speak English?" Her grandmother asked suddenly and Carina jumped, having forgotten she was there.

"Maybe he'll speak Spanish."Carina said waspishly, "I don't know. Listen, Gran, go make some tea or something." She shooed her out and the old woman went, grumbling irritably. "Please…I just had the worst afternoon of my life, closely following the worst night of my life…I don't need this. I need to get that crazy old woman into the damn truck and get the fuck away from all of this…" Carina rested her head in her left hand and rubbed her eyes. She was way, way out of her league. "I don't know anything about aliens," She looked up at the watching monster. His mandibles were twitching, and his eyes watched every move she made. "I don't know anything about guns, or killing things. I've never had to fight for my life before. God willing I never will again either but please… are there more of these things?" Carina pointed at the head. "More? Many?" She held up her fingers and pointed at the head, one finger, then two. Finally she pointed at the head and held up all her fingers, then all of them again. "_Mas_? _Es mucho_?"

To her shock, he looked at the head, then at her and nodded. She stared at him in amazement, then felt her heart drop as she realized he'd just agreed with her. There were lots of them. Many. "Oh shit." She whispered. "How many? ¿_Quantos?_" She held up all her fingers, he shook his head, she held them up again and again and again and he nodded. More than ten, more than thirty. Oh hell. Maybe she'd get lucky and he used a different system of counting things. Maybe thirty was two in his language. Or maybe not. She swallowed. "¿_Dónde_?" Carina swore, took a deep breath and asked in English, "Where?" She pointed at the head, then out the nearest window at the woods. He shook his head, nodded at the head and then looked up. She felt a surge of relief, he couldn't possibly mean the roof so he must mean space—there were more in space. Then another thought hit her. "Will they come…here?" She pointed at the head, then at the ceiling and brought her hand down to rest on the floor. It took another two tries before he seemed to understand. He looked at the head, and shifted uncomfortably and finally nodded. Her eyes widened, and fear suddenly slammed back into her stomach.

"Oh _mierda_…oh _mierda_…." She whispered and turned her head to stare at her prize. More of them. She'd been stupidly lucky to kill the two and she damned well knew it. She wasn't a fighter, and it was sheer dumb luck she'd managed to squeeze off both shots, let alone _hit_ anything! "Fuck, fuck fuck fuck…"

"Yoo…." She jumped, wincing again as her shoulder protested, but turned her eyes back to his face. He spoke again, mandibles flaring with effort, teeth clacking, "Yooo….keel…?" He nodded at the severed head. She looked at it, then at him. "Yooo…keil?" He tried again, sounding the words out carefully, before she realized that he was actually speaking English. His voice was deep and gravelly, like thunder rumbling or bits of rock grating together.

"I…keel…_kill_?" She guessed and after a moment, he nodded. _Thank god for universal yes and no_ she thought stupidly. She looked at the head, "Yes, I killed it. There were two." She held up her fingers and hoped he used a similar counting system. He studied her face for a moment, mandibles clicking together. His eyes settled on the scabbed over bite on her cheek, and then on the cut on her face.

"Guudd…." He rumbled and lay his head back, closing his eyes.

"Hey, wait!" She reached out and shook his leg, his head yanked upright he growled at her, but she shook her head, "You can't sleep, how long until they get here?" She pointed at the head, then at the sky and then at the ground. "How long?" She demanded. He looked at her, then at the ceiling and there was something distinctly strange about his face as he did it. If Carina hadn't know better…she'd have thought he looked…_guilty, _his mandibles tucked in tight against his mouth, almost like somebody biting their lip. If he'd had lips.

After a long moment, he shrugged, leaned his head back and he closed his eyes. She scowled, irritated both at the language barrier and at his obvious distrust of both her and her motives. He wasn't allowed to be suspicious of her! _He_ was the damned seven foot alien!

"Carina…" Her grandmother appeared in the door and Carina turned sharply to look at her, then winced as her shoulder sent her a sharp stab of pain as a reminder. She really should have braced the shotgun before firing. _Both_ times. "Carina…you can finish questioning him later. Look at you…" Her grandmother had crossed the room and now tilted Carina's chin up to inspect her wounds. "You look like you were dragged backwards over gravel. Get up and go take a shower, and then we'll do something about your face. Go girl, we've been managing just fine while you were tromping around in the woods hunting aliens." She nodded conspiratorially at the beast who was watching them from under his lashes, as if they shared some great secrets. The only secret that Carina could see was how her 95 year old, 80 lb grandmother had managed to prop the monster up against his damn pillows!

"Gran…."

"Don't argue with me! I could blow you over with a whisper right now!" She shoved at Carina's shoulder and the young woman rose, shakily to her feet. She hadn't realized how tired and sore she was. Her eyes lit on the severed head, and she reached down, hauling it up and tucking it under her arm before leaving the room. She wasn't sure what the creature thought of this performance, but she felt his eyes on her as she left.

* * *

><p>"Sit still. If you could drag that nasty thing all the way through the woods with this shoulder than you can sit still long enou—"<p>

"YEOW!"

"There, all done. You didn't dislocate it, but it's a damn miracle—"

"Gran! Language!"

"God can forgive me just this once I think. He _has_ presented us with extreme circumstances dear."

"I doubt God has anything to do with this." Carina flexed her hand and discovered that her fingers had stopped being numb. Her shoulder still hurt like hell, but whatever had grandmother had done had obviously stopped a nerve being pinched at least. Her grandmother produced one of Carina's old slings from nowhere and bound her arm up in it. Butterfly stitches had closed the cut on her forehead, but her grandmother pronounced that only time and a good night's sleep would cure the headache and the egg. Carina intended to get neither, however she did eat the bowl of soup her grandmother shoved under her nose.

Her shower had restored some of her humanity to her as well, washing off more layers of grim than Carina had worn in quite a while—since she was a kid, she'd wager. With a good deal of Tylenol, a judicious serving of soup and a few bandages, she was feeling almost herself again. Except for the beast upstairs, and his alarming news.

Carina was willing to bet that there had been some exaggeration on one of their parts, due to the fact that they were using sign language to describe a fairly complicated situation. They might not, and she was really praying for this one, even use the same system of counting, or their number signals might mean different things. He could even just be trying to scare her. But somehow…somehow she doubted it.

After attending to her own needs, at the insistence of her pernicious grandmother, she dressed herself awkwardly in her thin strapped sleeping tunic and went back upstairs, to confront their guest a second time.

Her arrival in the room was met with a low, chittering growl which she took for a greeting of some sort, though his expression was less than friendly. She started to squat down beside him, only to remember she was wearing a dress and finally knelt, awkwardly instead. She regarded him, he regarded her and before it could turn into a staring match, she picked up the cylinder containing the blue cheesy stuff.

"Food?" She opened it and held it up. He watched her, uncomprehending. "Are you hungry?" She picked out a piece of the stuff, and mimed eating it. "Is this even food?" She asked then, frowning at it. It didn't smell like anything _she'd _want to eat. He watched her for another moment, and she decided that she wasn't making sense. She picked out a larger chunk and proffered it too him. He lifted his hands, and with a clink they stopped short. "Oh yea…" She had forgotten that her grandmother had effectively hogtied him. "Here…" She held it out and—hoping to god he wasn't the vindictive sort—offered to feed him.

He gave a disgruntled growl and reared his head back. Either it wasn't food, or he didn't appreciate the attention. She scowled and held it out again, more forcefully.

"I'm not unchaining you, so either you eat like this or you don't eat." She said waspishly. She was tired, and her head was throbbing angrily, but she was reluctant to let her grandmother get this close with him awake. Her bones were a lot more fragile, and Carina remembered all too well his crushing grip on her arm. Her skin was a battlefield of blue and purple from it. She held out the bit again and he snarled at her and she did the first thing that came to mind. "Shut up!" She snarled back and punched his thigh, hard. He shut up. He stared at her, mandibles flared in irritation. While he was distracted by her impertinence, she shoved a handful of the stuff between his mandibles and into his gaping jaw. His mouth snapped shut with a muffled squeal and he glowered at her, chewing angrily.

The scene would probably have been comical, except that she was so damn tired. She could almost see the idea of spitting it back out at her forming in his mind, but apparently he was hungrier than he'd wanted to admit, because he swallowed it, forcefully. She picked out another square and proffered it. For a long moment, she thought he was going to refuse her again, but after a tense second or two, he leaned forward and spread his mandibles. She managed a small, insincere little smile and slid the square neatly into his mouth—his teeth suddenly closed down on her fingers! She stiffened, feeling the razor barbs biting into the back of her fingers, just barely enough to sting…his eyes held hers, cold and calculating and everything was very still. A second passed, then two and he released her fingers and chewed. She drew her hand back, with poise, or as much poise as she could manage considering she'd been preparing to have her fingertips bitten off a minute ago. There were little red welts where his fangs had held her hand, and she could feel damp saliva on the tips. His attempt to scare her had worked, but she'd be damned if she let him know that!

She fed him another two squares, deliberately putting her fingers in danger each time, and she sensed a kind of weary amusement from him as he refused his last bite. She closed the container and went to open the other, the one she thought might contain medical supplies, but to her surprise he shook his head and dismissed her, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. She scowled, angry that he should take such an attitude with her! After all, _he _was chained and at her mercy!

Chained yes, at her mercy no. She sighed and deliberately set her hand on his thigh to help herself stand. He growled, and she ignored him, settling herself across the room on the remains of her mattress. Curling up on it's threadbare surface, she deliberately closed her eyes.

She hadn't actually meant to fall asleep though.

End Note: Thank you again! Review if you can, send thoughts of Yaut'ja if you can't :D :D


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Note: Here's the chapter I promised you and thank you so, so much for being so understanding! I'm very pleased to say I can return to my writing now, so other than work on various leftover Christmas presents, and another story I'm working on, I should be able to get chapters out to you with some regularity again! Thank you again, really it means a lot that everyone loves this story as much as I do! Happy Holidays!

Disclaimer: See previous disclaimers as this author is too lazy to write another one. Honesty is the best policy :)

She woke to hot breath on her face. She struggled back to consciousness, aware that her dreams had been very vivid and dark, to discover a pair of blood orange eyes peering down into her face. She jerked backwards, started to scream only to find a hand clamping down tight on her throat! Mandibles flared, gripping her face tightly again, digging into her skin in a very familiar way, holding her face immobile—his eyes held her, his gaze boring down into hers and she knew he was going to kill her. His other hand was pressed flat against her stomach, holding her down, talons pressing through the thin fabric of her tunic. Another second, he would crush her throat, she just knew it. She shouldn't have taunted him, shouldn't have…he released her, his hand sliding away from her throat, talons leaving little warning stings behind as they went and he let go of the pressure on her stomach. His face didn't move, but she didn't scream either, and finally—slowly—he withdrew until he was sitting across the room. He sat down heavily and regarded her steadily, arms on his knees.

Carina sat up slowly, warily, heart thudding hard against her ribs. His chains sat on the floor, the padlocks for both his hands and feet cut neatly in two. The medical kit lay open and several of the tools lay scattered about. She swore to herself—she had left the damn kit too close! He must have been able to roll to one side and get too it….damn damn damn!

He didn't move though and he hadn't killed her. Scared the hell out of her, sure, but he hadn't even bruised her. She stood slowly, shakily and he watched her, eyes much more vivid and awake—he was feeling better. Slowly, the fact that daylight lay behind him sunk in and she realized that he'd probably escaped sometime during the night, but had let her sleep right through till morning. She looked around the room and found nothing out of place, except that he'd taken apart his gun—the remains lay neatly spread out in one corner, and he had removed his armor and mesh. Both lay in a neat pile to one side, obviously in states of semi-repair. Without them he seemed…well, she wasn't at all sure _what_ he seemed. Whether or not it was an improvement Carina wasn't certain yet.

Finally, she reached a decision and sighed.

"Fine. You win." She said grouchily and stomped off to the bathroom. When she'd finished, she peeked her head into the room to find him munching away at some of his rations, and he looked up when she entered, chittering at her. Definitely a kind of greeting. "I'm going downstairs. Don't kill anything or anyone please. We need to talk later." She knew he couldn't understand her, but it pleased her to pretend she could boss him around.

She found her grandmother in the kitchen, looking well rested and cheerful. What the hell was wrong with the woman?

"Goodmorning!"

"_Buenos dia_." Carina said, sleepily and got the expected reprimand.

"English Carina. You look better, very well rested!" Her grandmother deposited a kiss on her cheek and pressed a cup of coffee into her hand in passing. Carina thought over the irony of that statement for a while, and came up with a suitable answer.

"Our guest escaped his chains last night." She sat, seating herself at the table and tenderly poking her shoulder before sipping her coffee. It gave her grandmother time to recover from the shock.

"I…I didn't hear anything."

"Me neither."Carina said somewhat cheerfully. She was _relishing_ dispensing the shocking news, instead of receiving it. "He kindly woke me up just now. He's having his breakfast." She stood and picked up her cup of coffee, feeling a distinct glee in the shocked expression on her grandmother's face, before she departed.

She retrieved her overnight bag from her truck and went back upstairs to change. Emerging from the bathroom in a tank top and another pair of jean shorts, she took a deep breath and peeked into the bedroom. He had taken apart one of his metal wrist bracers and was examining it's innards, using bits of the tool kit to poke it's depths experimentally. He looked up as she entered, and snarled at her. She snarled right back and settled herself cross legged on her mattress. He glowered at her for a bit, and then went back to his examination of his bracer.

"So." Carina said conversationally, "What are we going to do about our little problem?" She pointed at the ceiling. She had dumped the severed head in the corner of the hallway, for lack of anything better to do with it, but she imagined he knew what she meant. He glanced at the ceiling also, then at her and went back to his task. Carina squinted at what his big hands appeared to be doing. To her surprise, the metal bracer appeared to be a computer of some kind. He had ripped off the face and was tugging at various wires, setting off the occasional spark and he was making some very dissatisfied noises to himself. After a while, he snarled and tossed the thing aside and turned a glower on her, as if it were all her fault.

"I'm Carina." She pointed at her chest. She supposed introductions were a bit overdue, but better late than never. She pointed at her chest again, "Cah-reen-aaahhhh…" She said slowly and he chattered at her, mandibles clicking in irritation. "And you are?" She pointed at him this time and his brow lowered, as if he found the whole conversation exceedingly annoying. He probably did. "Name? You. I'm Carina and you are…?" She was actually quite surprised when he answered her.

"Uruk." He snapped, teeth snapping hard on the sharp 'k' sound. She frowned. Was that his name, the name of his species or possibly a really nasty insult?

"Oo…erka?" She imitated, badly. He snarled at her, obviously offended by the butchering she'd given his word.

"Uu-ruu-k!" He growled and she tried again.

"Ouruka." He didn't even bother to correct her this time, but sat looking at her with mandibles quivering. "Uoruuk." She said and this time, he shrugged. _Close enough_, she thought. "Them?" She pointed at the ceiling, and he glanced upward again, mandibles sucking in tight against his mouth parts, fists clenching slightly. Finally, he looked at her.

"_Kainde Amedha_." He rumbled and she blinked in surprise. She wouldn't have thought he could make an 'n' or 'm' sound with a mouth like that. She had always assumed that _lips_ were needed.

"Kaen-de Ah-med-ha." She repeated, rolling the words around in her mouth. "What does that mean?" He made no reply, but then, she hadn't really expected him too. He picked over the pieces of his gun, grumbling to himself as he did so. "So…what are we going to do about them?" She asked, and was surprised when he looked at her, mandibles clicking as he toyed with a piece of his gun in his hands. After a long, long moment he _shrugged_ and replied in his accented English.

"Kielll…"

* * *

><p>Kill. Great. Carina chewed over the idea as she ate her lunch. She didn't know what he meant. Shortly after that brief and unenlightening bit of news, he'd gotten extremely grouchy and she'd left him stretched out on the floor, apparently napping. Must be nice, she thought irritably, to nap so easily in the face of an imminent threat. At least, she thought the threat was imminent. Maybe it wasn't, maybe they had all the time in the world. <em>And maybe pig's will fly<em> Carina thought, uncharitably.

Her grandmother had gone out to visit with her goats—though how she could stand the unbearable heat for any length of time Carina didn't know. She was beginning to think her grandmother had reserves of talents that she'd never even been able to guess at before. If their ancestry had been Irish, instead of Spanish, Carina would have said her wicked old grandmother had a touch of the Fae in her blood. Her grandmother would live forever then, outlasting even time itself. The thought brought a ghost of a sad smile to Carina's lips and she quickly shoved the last of her sandwich into her mouth to dispel it. Serious business was at hand!

Kill. Carina had a fair picture of what he was meaning, but had no clue as to how he intended to carry out this rather simplistic but hopefully effective plan. She scowled, turning facts over in her mind only to discover that she really had none. All she had were assumptions. Damned foolish assumptions at that. _Well_, Carina thought grouchily, _go with what you've got!_

She assumed that his little ship was some sort of escape pod. The thing certainly hadn't looked big enough to house a creature of his size and disposition for long space journeys. She assumed the creatures had come with him when he'd crashed to Earth. Or at least, she sincerely _hoped_ they had and there was not some sort of alien space craft hidden in the trees that housed _more _ of them! She assumed there was a larger ship in Earth's atmosphere that was largely infested with the creatures—thus the need for the escape pod and his crash to Earth. She assumed that _kill_ meant he was returning to his ship to do battle with the creatures—or he could blow it up from afar or _something_!

She had briefly considered calling some government agency or other—she was reasonably sure there was at least _one_ branch devoted to outer-space-alien-stuff—but had discarded the idea quickly. They probably got a million calls a day with some wacko claiming that alien spacecraft were hovering above Earth. She could just imagine what she'd say '_yes, yes there is definitely some sort of ship above Earth, it's got these terrifying space monsters on board and it's going to crash or land or something they're going to kill everyone or something! How do I know? Oh—the seven foot alien in my grandmother's spare bedroom told me!_' Carina was pretty sure she didn't need to be laughed at to feel that the situation was now completely out of her control. What the hell was she doing even contemplating this stuff!

"If you keep looking at your sandwich like that, I'm pretty sure it's going to start burning." Carina jumped, swore angrily and ducked the blow her grandmother sent her way. "Language Carina! Really! What _would _your mother say!'

"Jesus Gran!" Carina glowered, "I learned most of it from her." She shoved her sandwich away and set her elbows on the table, resting her chin on her fists.

"Our guest has left." Her grandmother calmly began putting away the meat and bread the Carina had left on the counter. Carina sighed heavily, then sat up sharply,

"What?" She asked, then louder, "_What_?"

"I saw him going into the trees. He went out the window again…really…I don't know _how_ I'm going to explain to your brother how it was broken."

Carina heard only the beginning half of this speech, as she had leapt up and sprinted for the doorway. She took the stairs three at a time, and burst into her little bedroom, standing in the doorway eyes wide and arms stretched out to steady herself on the doorframe. The bedroom was deserted. His armor was gone, the pieces of his gun were gone…all that remained was his bedding, the chains and….Carina went to the pile of quilts and bent over, retrieving the broken arm bracer and studying the busted computer interface. He'd probably left it because it was broken. He certainly hadn't forgotten anything else. Carina stared at the alien device, fingers tight on the bronze colored metal. She had no idea what to do first.

Turning woodenly she left the room and went to stand before the broken window, flipflops crunching on broken glass. His blood still marred some of the shards in the frame, dark green smears that had dried to the flaky consistency of fish-food. Her hands held tight to the bracer, as if it was a lifeline. The trees swayed idly in a heavy, damp breeze that stirred the sweaty tendrils of hair back from her face. Outside, nothing stirred and only one lazy overheated songbird gave off a half-hearted song. What should she do?

Half of her was relieved, the kind of relief one feels when they realize that all their problems have suddenly vanished unexpectedly. The other half was terrified of what his sudden desertion might mean. He had said 'kill'. It hadn't occurred to her he might not mean the creatures. What if he was leaving them to their fates? What if she had misinterpreted the whole thing, and he had really meant he was going to let them kill Carina and the rest of humanity? Fear was a tight, hard knot in her stomach…mixed quite unexpectedly with anger. How could he just take off? Just vanish like that with no 'thank you for saving my life', no 'thank you for taking such lovely care of me'…not even a 'thank you for killing those two ugly mugs in the woods'. Nothing. Vanished. Her grandmother was behind her then, muttering to herself. Carina didn't turn from the window, even when she felt her grandmother's arm slid around her waist.

"I've packed you some dinner." Her grandmother said quietly and for a very long minute, Carina didn't hear. Then she frowned and looked down at her tiny grandmother.

"What Gran?"

"Well, you can't very well just let him go off by himself can you?"

"_What_?"

"Those cuts of his aren't healed yet—what if he collapses in the woods?"

"Oh for _fuck's sake_ Gran!" Carina snarled and realized too late that she was too close to get away unscathed—her grandmother slapped her hard on the back of the head and Carina scowled at the trees outside. "We've just gotten rid of a fu…of a dangerous alien and now you want me to follow him? You really are totally insane, you know that?"

"It's not technically _following _him. He'll go back to his space ship won't he?"

"That won't do him much good, it's busted all to…busted all up." Carina sighed heavily and glowered at her grandmother. "You really aren't serious are you? About me going after him to be sure he doesn't 'hurt his widdle self'?" Carina added the last in a wheedling tone and her grandmother fixed her with a cool glower, the likes of which Carina hadn't seen since she'd been caught sneaking out of the house with a bottle of whiskey and her Grandfather's car keys.

"Carina Amalia Torrez…" Her grandmother started and Carina felt her stomach tighten. She was about to be delivered a scathing lecture and decided, at the last minute, to avoid it.

"Fine!" She yelled and stormed away, stomping down the stairs and into the kitchen. Her backpack was there, neatly packed with enough food to feed a small army and a jug of water. Carina slung it onto her shoulder, busily working up a very, very bad mood and stomped out of the house. She stood on the front steps for a full minute, before stomping back indoors to take the shotgun her grandmother was holding out for her, the box of extra shells and to shout, "If I die, I'm definitely coming back to say 'I told you so!'" And then she stormed out again.

* * *

><p>Carina found him precisely where her grandmother said he would be. When she arrived at the lip of the gully, he was standing over the second of the two bodies—the one who's exploded head and melted bits of his ship—and staring down at it is as if he'd never seen such a thing in his life. He was back in his armor, his mask in place and the gun Carina had found was attached to his right shoulder plate. He was every inch a dangerous warrior. Carina only hoped his species felt gratitude—she certainly felt she deserved some!<p>

He was staring with such concentration at the dead creature, that he didn't even bother to look up as Carina arrived. She stood, sweaty and tired and angry, staring down into the gully at him for a full three minutes before her patience finally snapped.

"You didn't even thank me!" She snapped, well aware that _that_ was not a central issue and tried not to feel nervous when he whipped around to glower at her, growling low in his throat. He stared at her for a long minute, then looked back down at the creature at his feet. The body hadn't changed much since she'd left it, and she wasn't surprised—what on earth would dare try and eat that nasty thing?

He gave a loud snort and turned, ducking inside the burnt hulk of the ship, and she could hear him inside, snarling and chittering to himself. She had half a mind to turn around and leave—he was obviously fine, and his temper hadn't improved any since she'd last seen him. She certainly wasn't going to get a thank you, and if there were more of the black beasts hanging around, she was of less use in fighting them than a sharpened stick. Carina then experienced a very lifelike vision of her grandmother pointing a finger at her and yelling and Carina decided it might be worth it to at least attempt to check up on him, maybe offer him part of her sandwich.

"Ureka?" She called, no response. "Damnit, however the hell you say it… Uruk?" She tried again. To her surprise, he poked his head out of the entrance and chattered at her in what could be taken as an inviting way. With a sigh, she slid down the embankment and joined him at the entrance.

To her surprise, just as she reached the doorway a huge clawed hand thrust something at her—a bundle of half-charred wires and what looked like a piece of paneling. Tossing her pack down, and setting the shotgun against the side of the hull, she took the bundle with a slight grunt—it was a lot heavier than it looked. He disappeared back inside, and after a slight grunt of his own—and a bout of snarling that sounded distinctly like swearing—he reappeared with what looked like half of the console.

He shoved past her rudely, and went to sit cross-legged in a clear spot near the buried prow of the shuttle, and when Carina didn't immediately follow him, he turned and snarled something at her one hand jerked imperiously at her. She glowered, but followed and threw the bundle of wires down next to his leg with as much vehemence as she could muster.

"Doesn't look like much is usable out of that lot." She commented unhelpfully, forcing herself to bend over his shoulder to peer at his work. For her trouble, he elbowed her in the stomach, sending her reeling back!

"HEY! Don't be a shit!" Carina's temper was a lot shorter than normal, so when she hauled off and punched him in the shoulder, she supposed she could be forgiven for the extra use of violence—especially when he snarled angrily but allowed her to look over his shoulder as he worked.

He obviously knew what he was doing—whatever that was—for he quickly dismantled the piece of console, ripping off the scorched facing to expose a mess of circuits and wires inside. In under a minute, he'd extracted what he was looking for and had discarded the burnt out bits. Carina didn't move an inch as he worked, not so much so as to not distract him from his work, but more because it made him uncomfortable to have her standing so close. She wasn't in the mood to do him any favors, and the whole situation was damned uncomfortable for her, so she rather felt it was justice to make _him _uncomfortable too. Every now and again, he would ask her to hold something—his version of asking being to snarl and shove something in her face. Carina almost wished she could see his actual face—definitely a first for her, considering how ugly the view was under that mask—so she could read his expressions, maybe figure out what he was doing or thinking.

After an interminable amount of time, he sat back with a satisfied grunt and turned to look up at the sky. Then he looked at her and for a moment, Carina swore she could see the wheels turning in his head. She could almost hear them creak as they worked. She hoped that whatever conclusion his thinking brought him too, it didn't include _her_ as pate. Or worse…as bait.

He started to rise, but gave a small snarl and stopped, reaching one huge hand up to rub at one of the lacerations she'd sewn up. The cuts looked better than they had the day before—maybe he was fast healer—but the stitches had been severely strained by his first attack on her. Carina wasn't sure if she should offer to take a look, or just let him suffer with it. To her surprise, he made the decision for her.

"Ouuuu?" He rumbled. His voice was somewhat muffled by the mask, but no less menacing and Carina squinted, trying to discern his meaning. "Ouuuuu fixxx?" he was rubbing the wounds with one hand, and looking at her intently.

"I sewed you up." She agreed tentatively, frowning and nodding. The stitches that had popped lose the day before were dangling, and Carina wondered if she oughtn't try and cut them out. No sense in trying to re-stitch the damned things, she thought distractedly, he'd done a number on it when he'd tried to eat her face and there was nothing left to sew to.

"Fix." He pointed at his chest and her eyebrows arched. That hadn't sounded like a question. After a moment, Carina came around in front of him and squatted down. With a glance at him—just to be absolutely sure she hadn't misinterpreted his meaning (the damn mask was as unreadable as ever) she leaned forward an inspected the damage. She was pleased to see that indeed, he seemed to heal with a lot more efficiency and speed than humans. Even the worst of the lacerations seemed to be closing almost before her eyes. Studying the scraps, she found a thin layer of new skin over each.

"This is amazing…" Carina breathed, eyes wide. She squatted between his legs, and poked at the edges of one the smaller gashes she'd closed up with sutures—and found that the edges of the wound were nearly knit. By the next day, she could take the stitches out! "My god…" She leaned closer and studied the deep puncture. She'd been unable to close that one with sutures, but had packed it well with antisceptic and sterile bandage. Of course, he'd pulled all of that off, but she found no reason now to keep it covered—there was evidence of clean proud-flesh building up from the inside. She looked up at him, his huge masked face expressionless in the face of her delight. "You're amazing!" She said, "You must produce new cells at an absolutely prodigious rate!" She grabbed his arm, lifting it to study the raw bite. The least damaged bits had sealed over already, and the deeper chunks had developed a thick scab. She sat back on her heels and stared at him. "You're the ultimate warrior. Beat the shit out of you and you just keep on ticking!" He cocked his head when she laughed, but said nothing. "Well… I can't fix you any better than you're fixing yourself. By tomorrow you should be well on your way to having just a few more…what the hell _is_ that _noise_?" Carina looked up, hearing the soft humming that she'd taken for wind beginning to intensify.

The breeze that had been tickling the back of her neck began to stir her hair, and the huge alien before her rose to his feet, raising his face to look at the sky with her. Steadily the wind began to grow, and the sound that had been a hum began to grow louder, first a steady thrumming and finally a roar!

Carina stared in shock and awe as, over the tree tops, a ship materialized. She hadn't realized how dusky it was becoming, or that the day had begun to leave, until she saw the ship outlined against the darkening sky, a ship whose engines lit up the ground around them! Her first instinct was to run, but Uruk grabbed her arm as she moved, and held her tight—even when she swore and kicked at him—until the ship had roared itself out and settled to the ground.

As it settled next to the other dead ship, it's engines powered down and after a moment, a doorway identical to the one on the other pod hissed open. With a satisfied growl from Uruk, he released her and strode towards the other ship, leaving Carina snarled and swearing after him, rubbing her arm which now bore matching bruises with its twin on the other side.

He disappeared inside, and finally Carina's mind caught up with the shock of the last few minutes. She glanced down at the mess of equipment and wiring at her feet, and the pieces fell into place.

"Did you call another ship?" She yelled after him. The engines were still hissing, so her yelling was barely audible above their metallic whine. "What if there are more of those things in there!" She took a few tentative steps towards the ship, but hesitated lest he decide to take off then and there—wouldn't that just top her day, being burnt to a crisp after having survived hell! "URUK!" She screamed after him and after a moment, like a terrible kind of déjà-vu, he reappeared, sticking his head out to snarl something unintelligible at her and then disappeared again. The ship didn't immediately lift off…and Carina was vaguely disappointed. She'd had a faint hope that somehow this was the end of her misadventure. She stood awkwardly in the growing gloom, debating with herself about leaving, or staying, or following him into the ship. Finally, her inevitable curiosity won out and—with her heart slamming her ribs in a violent tattoo—she began to creep towards the ship.

Unlike the first time she entered an alien space craft, this one was a little more what she'd always imagined it should be. The structure was intact and gleaming faintly, everything had a very cave-like but efficient feel. Though…it was surprisingly dark inside. And hot. Carina peered around in the gloom, finding consoles lit only by a faint reddish glow and Uruk's huge, hulking shape moving about in the shadows. After a moment, she retreated back outside and took a slow breath in the relatively cooler air.

"What the hell is wrong with you guys? Do you actually _like _living in a sauna?" She peered through the doorway. He was sitting at the control console, and muttering to himself, interspersing grunts and growls with his odd little clicks and clacks. After a long moment, in which Carina nervously listened for sounds indicating unfriendly stowaways, the massive alien gave a snarl that had unpleasant connotations and ripped his mask from his face, slamming it down and rubbing angrily at his eyes in a gesture that was so human and so clearly frustrated that Carina found herself smiling. After a long moment in which he stared at the console in a gloomy fashion, he finally turned to look at her. She couldn't quite make out his features in the darkness, but she could feel his eyes on her and for a moment, she felt afraid of something she couldn't quite name...

He rose from his chair and stood, taking up a third of the space all by himself, as if waiting for something—and then finally he seemed to reach a decision.

"Ouuuu helllp." He said and for a moment, Carina's mind couldn't quite make the connections…and then she shook her head.

"Help you. Yes I helped you." She agreed. He shrugged his shoulders, as if resettling some huge weight about his person. "Are you leaving now?" She asked, for lack of any better question. "What about the creatures…do you have friends who can help you up there?" She doubted he'd understand the whole thing, but she was surprised to see him shaking his head to himself, there in the steamy interior of his ship.

"Ouu helllpp…" He said again, though this time he said it softly enough to make Carina think he might have been talking to himself. She frowned, shaking her head.

"I don't understand." She said, shrugging. "Look…I gotta get back to my _abeula_. If you're leaving, then good luck and all….I guess I've done all I can. Please…be careful and…well…kill them all I guess." He said nothing in response to this, and Carina was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable. There was something in the way he was looming…something in the way he was standing, so silent and…guiltily….that made her feel she really ought to leave. She took one step backwards and he moved.

Carina had never fought for her life before, but she definitely had instincts that lent her reflexes meant to save her life. She ducked the hand that reached out for her, but she only got two steps before something heavy landed at the back of her neck. She saw blinding stars, there was a moment of excruciating pain at the base of her skull and then…nothing.

End note: And there it is. I'll admit I'm not entirely happy with aspects of this chapter, but as I've not gotten to write in a while I'll put it down to a bit of rust in my muse's inner workings! Thank you again for reading! Naja


End file.
